Snuggle bunny is sick

We've all been so healthy for so long that I'd almost forgotten what it was like to have a sick child. Ella woke up sick yesterday, medium-fever and headache-sniffle sinus cold, which magically morphed into the vomiting kind yesterday afternoon. Work went out the window for both of them, even Madison, though I had projects to complete. So we spent the afternoon camped out on the bathroom floor -- me with my laptop on the floor trying to get some work done, Ella with my head in my lap and her body huddled in the towels and blankets placed strategically near the toilet, and Madison reading Harry Potter in the bath nearby. Everyone says how -- in a way -- cute it is when kids get sick because they get so darned snuggly and I-want-no-one-else-but-Mommy, but Ella is like that all the time and so it wasn't really anything different in that realm.

It's interesting, I'm not really inclined to go near most other people when they're sick just out of interest of not catching it myself. But there is no way I'm in the least inclined to apply the same logic to my kids. Kick the kid out of my bed because she's sick and her sleeping with me radically increases the possibility of my getting sick too? No way! She stays! If I had to choose between her getting me sick and my avoiding her when she's sick, there's no contest whatsoever. It's a visceral thing, not even a logical one. I guess it's a beneficial evolutionary instinct.

It was a great day for her to be sick, though, because we had a snowstorm and everything was canceled -- for us it was piano and soccer -- and so I sent David to work in the Subaru and we just stayed put the whole day. In the bathroom.

We had a wild night last night, though, with her awake at various points in my bed, then in her bed, more medicine required, etc. But I anticipated that so I went to bed at 9:15. She's now awake, hoarse, snuggled in my lap as I type around her. Maybe we'll even get some work done today.

I hope Madison doesn't get it.